Furight Night
by Lagarde
Summary: Halloween isn't a well-known "holiday" in Zootopia. A year after the events of Winter of the Bear, our heroes get a call to investigate a possible assault in the Nocturnal District and things don't go as planned. This story should not have any major spoilers if you haven't read the other stories yet.
1. Chapter 1

**Furight Night, Chapter 1 – The Case**

 **October 24** **th** **, Wednesday Late Afternoon – Nocturnal District**

"Nick, stop it. Right now. Just stop."

Nick held his ground a moment longer, with his muzzle squarely between Judy's upright ears and paws on her hips, effectively using her as a shield. "Just…protecting you, Fluff."

Judy tilted her head back so she could look up at him. "It was thunder, you dummy. You're protecting me from thunder by trying to hide behind me?"

"Bogo said I should cover your tail as your partner, so we didn't lose you again. I'm doing my job. Your tail is covered."

"It's supposed to be figurative," she told him, then reached down and shoved his hips away from her tail. "Not literal. I can't even decide if you're a coward, or using this as an excuse to cuddle."

"Little of both," he admitted, clearing his throat and standing up and away from her. They both straightened their uniforms, and Nick was thankful that Judy went right back to searching the area with her flashlight and did not see him shiver nervously—and jump again when lightning flashed overhead. "Fox doesn't need an excuse to cuddle or cower."

"Don't I know it," Judy teased, grinning as she swept the light over the driveway ahead of them. "I swear, I have to peel you off me when there's a storm during the night at home, and we've got about the most sound and weather-proofed house in town."

"We'll pretend that's only because of the storm, Fluff. Can we get on with the police business side of things, or are we gonna kick the poor fox while he's down?"

Judy nodded her head toward the driveway. "You're the one slowing us down. We going to go on, or do you need me to hold your paw the whole way?"

Nick looked around at the damp and dark trees lining the road, where it led into the driveway, then checked back toward their cruiser, parked a short distance away. Another flash of lightning made his fur stand on end, and he took a deep breath, slid both paws in his pockets, and said, "Yes. Please. That'd be nice. Can you also pet my tail and call me a good boy?"

"Not in public, I won't," she countered, then began up the driveway slowly. "Stop stalling. We need to check this out, or we aren't doing our jobs."

Following a few steps behind her, Nick pulled out his phone. He tapped the screen a few times, until it registered his finger pad in the cold damp weather and lit up, showing the call they were responding to.

 _Anonymous call from driver states they saw mammal pulling unconscious second mammal heading toward house at 16366 Noctus Lane. No callback number available. No officers in area. No listed residents at address. No information on file. Approach with caution. Victim was seen wearing dark brown or black canvas garments. No information on assailant or assailants._

Nick stopped at the end of the driveway, trying to ignore the slush on the road that soaked through his hind paw fur, as he looked over the mailbox. Leaning slightly, the rusted old box had three numbers nailed to the side: 666, with a slight space between the first and second.

"Might be the wrong address," Nick offered, somewhat hoping. "You sure you got the right place?"

Judy went to the mailbox, then bent down and picked something off the ground. She held up her paw, which held the missing numbers. "Right there. One and three."

"So we've got thirteen and six-six-six? Oh yeah, that's a great sign."

"Don't tell me you're superstitious."

"Not superstitious," he explained, shrugging. "Just cautious when it comes to truly weird stuff. The Nocturnal District always made me jumpy. I blame my father's bedtime stories as a kit."

"And what were those like?" Judy asked, ducking under a rusted old chain across the driveway, which was the reason they were not driving farther. Once past it, she beckoned him down the path. They walked together a short distance, both watching the dense woods on either side.

"Don't remember much," he admitted. "I used to be afraid of a monster in the closet. Ironically, I thought a bear was going to eat me. Tell me that's not prophetic from last year. Anyway, he jumped out at me one night to be funny and prove there wasn't a bear in there. Can't remember if I wet myself or not, but that's beside the point."

"That's terrible," Judy said over her shoulder, then hopped back as she stepped in a puddle that went past her ankles. Shaking off her hind paws, she hung her head sadly. "I'm never going to be dry again."

"Then let's get this done with, so we can get back to the precinct and I can dry you off."

Judy looked at him. "You mean so I can dry off? Pretty sure they won't let you in the other locker room at the precinct, and toweling me down in the lobby is right out, no matter how much Clawhauser would giggle."

"Locker room, janitor closet, Bogo's office…wherever. Offer still stands."

"Maybe when we get home," she said, laughing. "Now move it, officer. I want to get home before the sun comes up."

"It doesn't really come up in this district," Nick explained, following as she set off again. "That's kind of the point. It's only late afternoon right now."

This time, Judy ignored him and kept going, effectively ruining his only stall-tactic. They plodded along on the long tree-lined dirt road for some time, until at last they approached a dilapidated old house. Nick stared at the broken windows, uneven walls, and the rotted front door, then stopped and shook his head.

"We are not going in that place, call or not," he told Judy, and she came to a stop a short distance ahead of him with a sigh. "That is straight-up the textbook definition of a haunted house. I swear I've seen it in a horror movie. We've all seen it. For all I know, that is literally the model used for those movies."

A boom of thunder seemed to agree with him, and the house was cast in deep shadows by the accompanying flash of lightning.

"I haven't," Judy said firmly, tapping one hind paw more rapidly than he could follow, especially in the low lighting. "I don't watch horror movies. Never have. Are you coming or not?"

"Never seen a horror movie? How did you manage to get a medal as the bravest officer in the city without watching a single horror movie?"

"You're stalling. We both know you're stalling. And how I've managed to go this long without them, is because my family really doesn't believe in those blood and guts movies. Most of the Hoppses think a police car chase is too scary. If you think my choice in movies is weird, let me add it to the list of things I'm still talking to the department therapist about. For now, can we please get this over with? I really don't care if it _is_ haunted, we're going inside to make sure no one's hurt. If it makes you feel better, I'll arrest any ghosts we find."

Knowing better than to argue with Judy once she had her mind set on anything, Nick followed obediently down the dirt road, doing his utmost to avoid stepping in any puddles as they approached the house. Even holding her flashlight, Judy splashed through several more—requiring them to stop while she muttered and shook her paws dry. Apparently having better night vision had value beyond sneaking up on her when the lights were off at home, as he walked along without any more light than the one she held without hitting any of the puddles—though she did make them fairly obvious by stepping in all of them.

They soon walked up onto uneven paving stones, and neared the rotted and warped wooden porch out front of the building's only visible door. Judy swept her light across the door, then to the broken windows, many of which were boarded up. When nothing presented itself, Nick watched her raise and tilt her ears, slowly moving her attention across the property, searching for anything at all.

"Anyone?" Nick asked. "I sure don't see or smell anything, but there's so much mildew in this district, I can barely smell myself."

"I can't hear much over the creaking of the house. If there's anyone in there, they're unconscious or trying not to make a sound."

"So we should…go?" he asked hopefully.

"Yes, we should go _inside_ ," she corrected, leading the way up onto the porch. Even as light as she was, every pawstep created loud creaks. "C'mon!"

Reluctantly, Nick walked up the steps after her, feeling each give a little under his pads. _Things I do for that bunny._

If Judy heard him, she kept it to herself. She drew her pistol in her free paw as she reached the door, giving him a momentary glance to ensure he was ready. She tilted her head toward the door, then waited until he moved to the other side.

"On three," she whispered.

Early in their time together, Nick had believed his role in the partnership would involve picking up heavy objects, reaching things on high shelves, and kicking in doors, given that he weighed almost three times what Judy did. That foolish belief had been beaten out of him quickly, as bunnies never needed someone else to reach something high up, and certainly could kick in doors.

"Three!" Judy hissed, and stepped out in front of the door. With a straight kick, she not only opened the door, but nearly took it off its hinges, banging it against the wall inside as it swung freely. "ZPD! Is anyone inside? We're coming in!"

Aside from a few creaks of the house, there was no answer.

"I've got a few rooms on this floor, plus stairs up and down," Judy said over her shoulder, advancing slowly into the front room. "You take the upstairs and I'll clear this floor. Keep your radio handy."

Nick came to a sharp stop just inside the doorway. "Are you kidding me? No. We aren't splitting up in a haunted house. That's cliché. I refuse. Every movie does that and the fox dies first."

"That's ridiculous, Nick."

"I'm aware! The fox _always_ dies first, usually crying like a kit. You send me up there, and some axe-murderer...or, you know, giant insane bear with oversized fangs...is going to eat my face. I'm fond of my face and want to keep it."

"Nick, just do it," she ordered, pointing her flashlight up the stairs. "The sooner you sweep the upstairs, the sooner we can get out of here. If the axe-wielding bear upstairs eats your face, I'll kiss it and make it better...after we're done. Okay?"

Nick looked between the stairs and Judy a few times, then sighed and pulled out his own flashlight. "You know how to talk me into anything, don't you?"

"Do I? Yes...yes I do," she said happily, setting off toward the first room, while Nick padded up the steps.

Nick continued until he reached the top of the staircase, then looked back down toward where Judy had been standing. Her light faded quickly away as she moved around the large front room, until soon he could not see any hint of her passing.

 _Gonna be okay_ , he assured himself, facing back toward the sharp turn at the top of the stairs. _No giant fanged bear with an axe, waiting to brutally murder me in the dark. Gonna be fine. Five minutes, tops, and we're walking...no, running...back out to the car._


	2. Chapter 2

**Furight Night, Chapter 2 – Downstairs**

 **October 24** **th** **, Wednesday Early Evening– Nocturnal District**

Judy waited until Nick had disappeared up the stairs, before she even considered moving deeper into the house. Given the way he was overreacting, she half-expected him to come running right back down and refuse to leave her side. There were days she wondered how he had managed to survive a year on the force, and whether he had gotten that far by avoiding thunderstorms as a matter of habit.

 _Big scaredy-fox_ , she thought, smiling as she scanned the main room with her flashlight. _Probably just putting on a show for me, so I feel like the hero again. I really think he likes being the fox in distress, who needs saving._

Judy swept her flashlight over old chairs and a couch, all covered with tarps and a layer of dust. As she came back around, she realized that there was very little dust on the floor, but plenty on the furniture. Someone had come through recently, disturbing much of the old layers of dust, but wanted it to look dirtier than it was.

Taking one step toward the nearest small table and its cover, Judy's toes came down lightly on the floorboards, but the creak that came from under her nearly made her fur fall out in surprise.

 _Time to lay off the carrot cookies, Judy_ , she chided herself, prodding a different board with her middle toe. When it was silent, she walked that way instead, making her way to the table. _You used to be able to move dead-silent around buildings. Nick's definitely started getting to you with all the cuddling, lounging about, and movie-nights. Next week, it's back to the gym for both of us. Maybe jogging. He'll hate it, but if I just tell him it makes him look handsome, he'll run himself into the ground._

She soon reached the table and touched the cloth over it, finding that the coating of grey over it was not actually dust, but old sawdust. Stranger still, it was stuck to the cloth, as though glued there. Someone was definitely hiding something, and she intended to find out what.

A deafening boom from upstairs caused Judy to drop to one knee, a paw on her tranquillizer pistol. Before she could call out to see if Nick was okay, she saw the front door of the house slam shut from the corner of her eyes. The resounding click of a deadbolt let her know it was not merely the wind.

 _Oh, chickens on Sunday, what did you get yourself into, Judy?_ she thought, voicing one of Nick's mother's favorite phrases as she backed away from the stairs, toward the front door. She kept one paw on her pistol, but reached out with the other until she found the door handle. Sure enough, it was locked, and there was no way to unlock the deadbolt without a key—or Nick's lock picks.

"Nick, what's going on up there?" Judy called out, and her voice echoed around the floor several times. "Nick?"

There was no reply from upstairs.

Her fur bristling, Judy drew her tranquillizer pistol and inched toward the stairs. To her surprise, the steps themselves were gone. Now, only a steep and smooth ramp led up to the second floor. She thought about trying to jump it, but it was much too far. Putting one hind paw onto the flat where the first step had been, her toes slid immediately. Even trying to dig her toe claws into the wood, she could not get enough grip to actually climb.

"Nick, can you hear me?" Judy yelled, moving around to the center of the main room. As she reached an angle where she could see most of the upper part of the staircase, she realized the stairs ended right where the turn toward the upper floor occurred. A solid-looking wooden barrier now blocked the path toward Nick, and from him back to her. Grabbing her radio off her belt, she clicked the button and said, "Nick, reply right now if you can hear me! Chirp back if you can't talk, but are getting the message."

Judy held her ground and waited another minute, but got no reply.

Turning to a nearby end table, Judy tried to pick it up to throw at the room's front window and create a way out, but the table did not budge. Bending down, she found that all four legs of the table were bolted to the floor. She checked the nearby chair, and found the same thing.

"A trap," she whispered, growling softly as she stood. "Nowhere to go but onward, and hope my fox isn't hurt. There has to be another way to get to Nick. Time to hurry."

Padding through the room as fast as she dared, while watching for tripwires and anyone hiding in the shadows, Judy did one quick circle around the walls. From that entry room, there was a doorway, the stairs up, a closed door, and the door out to the front porch. She went first to the second closed door and popped it open an inch, finding a set of stairs going down. Given how things had panned out with the last set of stairs, she closed that door and headed for the open doorway.

On her way, Judy looked out the windows on the south wall of the house, and instantly saw the screws set into the frame of each and the security wire in the glass. There was no going out that way without a screwdriver. Clenching her jaw and steeling her nerves, she continued on.

Judy slowly approached the open doorway, and found that she was nearing the kitchen. Like the front room, the kitchen table and chairs were weathered and old—and fastened to the floor—but what caught her attention was a faint whistling. Cocking her ears to follow the sound as she moved, she tiptoed into the kitchen, wary for anyone inside who might be waiting for her. To her relief, the room was as empty as the previous, and the sound seemed to originate with the window over the kitchen sink, giving her a small sliver of hope that one window had been missed by whoever had secured the place.

Doing one more sweep of the room, and especially the two closed doors, Judy returned her attention to the sink. At first, she only had eyes for the windows, where a break in the glass caused the incessant whistling from the winds outside. Then, she began to realize there was a rank stench which made her want to vomit or run screaming. She could not put a finger on it at first, but as she climbed onto one of the chairs, she saw what was triggering the reaction.

On the table, a rotting sandwich lay, with its bun soaked in dried old blood. Were it not for that telltale scent, she would have assumed it to be a bugburger. The moment her mind clicked with what she was seeing, her stomach clenched and she fought to keep from throwing up. Gagging, she turned away from the table and looked back at the sink, where a mound of raw meat, a rusted knife, and a meat grinder lay, surrounded by buzzing flies. This time, she was unable to control the reflex and fell off the chair onto the floor, choking as she vomited into one corner of the room.

Soon, the gagging stopped and Judy got control over her body again. As much as she wanted to get to the window, it would mean going over the pile of meat, and she knew she could not handle that. More importantly, she needed to find Nick before that escape route would matter. Swallowing hard, she surveyed the rest of the room, trying to put the cannibalism out of mind for the moment.

Opposite the doorway she had entered through, another mostly-closed door lay, as well as a second on the wall to her right. They were both ajar ever so slightly, but no light escaped those rooms. Using her flashlight to check the floor, she found drag marks in the dirt there, though it seemed to go to and from both doors, giving her no idea which was safer, or where she might find the potential victim.

Judy stopped where she was as she realized she had put both herself and Nick in danger by getting distracted when they had first arrived. They had called in to report arriving, but the precinct had not heard from them since. It could be hours before anyone came looking. With them now trapped, she could not wait for someone to wonder where they were.

Drawing her radio, Judy switched it to the frequency to call the precinct. "Clawhauser, this is Officer Hopps. I'm requesting immediate assistance at our previously-reported address. My partner and I have been separated, and possible one eighty-seven." Judy released the button and waited for Benjamin to reply, but the radio only hissed softly. After several seconds, she tried again. "Hopps to Clawhauser. Please reply."

She stood still for a full minute, hoping something would come back, but the radio remained quiet. Grumbling, she flipped it to the setting to communicate with Nick, and slid it back into her belt.

 _Too far from the car or any ZPD boosters_ , she reminded herself, thinking through how far they had walked down the road after parking. _Nick warned you there was almost no reception in this district. That didn't just mean your cell phone, you dumb bunny!_

Judy hurried to the doors on the far side of the kitchen and peeked through each, without opening them more. She started to go through the door on her right, but paused as she picked up a scratching noise through the other. Tilting her ears, she moved that way, sniffing as she got close. With her paw holding her flashlight on the door, and her other on her pistol, she inched the door open. As soon as she touched it, the far door—the one she had entered the kitchen through—slammed shut. She jumped, flattening out against the nearby wall with her pistol aimed at the door, but nothing was there. Whatever had happened had come from the far side, whether it was another mammal, or a gust of wind.

"Just the wind," Judy assured herself, trying to ignore the bloodied meat on the counter and all that its presence implied. Harder to ignore was the bloody paw print she then noticed on one cupboard. Step by step, she moved back toward the closed door. "Open it back up and find out where the wind came from."

Judy reached the entrance door of the kitchen and stood on her toes to reach the handle. She got two fingers onto it and pulled, feeling only a firm resistance. The door was locked, not just trapping her in the house, but forcing her to continue on through one of the other doors. With nothing but her pistol to break the window over the sink, she wanted to wait until she found Nick and anyone who might be hurt or trapped in the house before trying to escape.

"There has to be a rational explanation for all of this," she told herself, then looked over at the rotting meat. Cringing, she forced herself to look anywhere else. "Or, maybe we're going to get eaten like Nick thought. I hate it when he's right."

Turning back to the other doors, Judy went to the far one, where she had heard the faint scratching. Using her hind paw, she kicked the door fully open with her flashlight and pistol up. To her initial relief, nothing inside moved enough for her to see, but a wave of nauseating stench hit her, making her back away to keep from choking.

In the narrow beam of her flashlight, Judy found that the room was once a larder of some sort. Any food that had been in there was long gone, replaced by a stack of pearly white bones. Most she could not identify readily, but she recognized squirrel and pig skulls among them, destroying any attempt she made to convince herself she had only found bird bones—albeit large ones. Gagging, Judy backed away, trying not to think too deeply on what the implications of that many skeletons might be. In moving away, her flashlight dipped, and she spotted a faint trail of what appeared to be dried blood on the floor. Tracing it, she found that the drag marks went straight to the other kitchen door she had not opened yet.

"If anyone's there, this is the ZPD," Judy called out, knowing any surprise had been lost long before. The faint waver in her voice made her wish she felt more confident. "I'm coming in."

Judy counted to three, then marched to the remaining door. Giving it a light shove of her hind paw, the door swung open with a loud creak. She held her ground a moment, waiting for anything to move or for her light to reveal anything else gory, but the room appeared to be a large dining room, with rickety chairs and a dusty table. With nothing else visible, she walked slowly forward into the room, hoping for another way to the upstairs or a door out of the house.

"Hello?" she asked the room, as she passed the threshold. "Is anyone here?"

Judy slid past the first chair as she moved her flashlight back and forth across the floor, following the dried blood stains toward the far end of the room, near a window. Through the curtains, flashes of lightning did little to illuminate the room, but added to the sense of being somewhere she had no desire to be. Each time she tried to search the room, the lightning flashes made it difficult to make out shapes in the shadows, without keeping her flashlight moving. To her relief, there appeared to be nothing in the room, and another open door at the far end of the room gave her a goal for the moment.

"This isn't so bad," she whispered to herself, ears tilting back and forth as she searched for any sign of Nick. "Find Nick, get some backup out here, and—"

A faint buzz made Judy freeze. She searched the floor around her, but there was nothing visible, though she could make out the sound of something having come on. As she turned and twisted, trying to find anything near her hind paws, both doors slammed shut, trapping her. A half second later, a barrier slid down over the window, dropping the room into absolute darkness, other than where her flashlight shone.

Squeaking once softly, Judy tucked her ears and flattened her back to the wall, ready for anything. What did come was not anything she could have imagined, though.

No sooner had Judy gotten up against the wall than the room lit with a faint glow, casting long shadows everywhere from the furniture. Before she could look for the source, shadows of large mammals appeared, moving around the room and sitting in the chairs—which she could see were empty. As she watched, the shadows slid something to the middle of the table and a knife was raised. A second later, a shriek of some mammal being hurt or killed filled the room. Then, as suddenly as the glow and shadows had appeared, the room again when dark. Somewhere nearby, she heard what sounded like someone gasping for breath for quite some time, before they went still. Once the room was silent, other than her own ragged breathing, the dim light came back, but without any of the animal shadows.

Judy could not make herself move for several seconds after the glow returned, as her arms and legs trembled incessantly, while her mind raced, trying to find some way to save a mammal who she had never seen and who did not appear to even be in the room. Before she got herself moving, the two doors clicked and swung open. To her dismay, the solid cover over the window did not reopen.

Scrambling, Judy raced for the door she had yet to explore, finding that it led to a narrow staircase up. Without a second thought, she raced up the steps, hoping to find Nick before anything awful happened to him.


	3. Chapter 3

**Furight Night, Chapter 3 – Upstairs**

 **October 24** **th** **, Wednesday Early Evening – Nocturnal District**

"Ridiculous that they'd kill the fox first, she says," Nick muttered under his breath as he reached the top of the steps. A long dark hallway ahead of him led past several closed doors to a window at the far end, through which he could see leafless trees waving in the constant wind. "Get out and watch some movies, Fluff. We're the red-furred stepchild of the mammal world. Everyone but the foxes loves to watch a fox get killed by an axe murderer. Not like I don't have an excuse for being afraid of bears these days…"

Nick grumbled under his breath as he approached the first door. The handle rattled, but would not turn, and the door itself felt a lot more solid than Nick had expected in the old house. He gave it an extra shove to see if it was merely stuck, but that got him nowhere. Turning to face the opposing door, he found it locked, too. A peek through the keyholes revealed empty rooms on the other side.

"Going to be a very short police search at this rate," he said, eyeing the remaining two doors. He took one step toward the part of the hall, then stopped as he realized something was out of place. Knowing better than to ignore his instincts, he checked both walls carefully, until he had gotten down onto his knees to check near the floorboards.

At first, he thought he had overreacted, but on second glance, he found two small holes, one on either wall. They were at about ankle-height and would be easily missed, especially in the dark. Even with his flashlight, they looked like more than nail holes, though Nick worried at first there might be a tripwire of some kind. Finding no wire, he concluded he was looking at some kind of optical tripwire or security system.

"Gotta do a lot better than that to catch me," he said, smirking as he stood up. With a self-pleased bounce, he stepped over the holes to continue down the hall, making sure to keep his tail up so it did not fall into the line between them, either.

A brilliant flash of lightning outside startled Nick, and he flinched, bringing his tail down hard. The instant it hit the floor, he realized he had done precisely what he had been so focused on not doing. As he had all but anticipated, when the invisible beam was cut, something was set in motion. First, the window at the far end of the room was blacked out as a sheet of metal or wood dropped into place. Then, behind him, he heard a moving wall slam shut loudly, cutting off his only route of escape. No sooner had his access to the stairs been sealed off, then all four doors on the floor unlocked in unison, loudly.

"Dead fox," Nick whispered, staying very still as he waited for something to come out of the rooms to get him. "I am the deadest fox in the world."

Nick held his breath, waiting for the worst, likely in the form of an axe-wielding bear. Soon, he began to relax, only to hear a very soft sound. Turning his head and ears slightly, he recognized the deep growl of a far larger predator. He followed the sound's direction to the room nearest the stairs. His first instinct was to protect Judy, but the solid wall that had cut him off from her also ensured her safety. That led directly to his backup instinct: Run.

All four paws sliding on the uneven wood floor, Nick raced toward the remaining two doors of the hall, trying to put some distance between himself and whatever might be coming down the hall behind him. The sound of claws on the floor echoed through the hallway as he dove into the first room, kicking the door shut behind him. Scrambling paws outside were paired with loud huff and snarling, and Nick did his best to silence his breathing, though his pounding heart seemed ready to give him away. Just as he began to think the mammal outside had decided to wander off, the door shook with a booming noise.

"Oh shit, it's coming in," Nick said, turning over to look around the room. As he did, he reached for his radio, hoping to call Judy and warn her, but the radio was gone, lost somewhere in the hallway.

The room he lay in was as dilapidated as the hallway before it, and contained little more than broken old chairs and what might have once been a bed. The far window—the only source of light after Nick lost his flashlight in the run—had thick bars covering it, eliminating that as a way out. Right under the window, however, was a large hole in the floor with a ladder sticking up out of it. Written on the wall in white paint was an arrow pointing at the ladder and the word "Escape."

Again the door shook, and Nick was stuck with a tough choice. Stay where he was, and have someone kick in the door to attack him, with only a tranquillizer pistol for protection, or go down the ladder in the vague hope something safer might be down there. A third boom from the door made up his mind, and he decided that the best bet was to lead it as far from Judy as possible. Sliding across the floor, he grabbed the ladder and hurried down, hoping that would put him somewhere near Judy downstairs.

Nick got halfway down the ladder before he had to slow and stare hard at his surroundings to see anything. The room was unlit and with only the dim light from the window above, even he could see almost nothing. Try as he might, he could not see the floor below. Reaching out with one hind paw, he tried to feel for the floorboards, but as he did, a trapdoor overhead slammed shut, cutting off his remaining light. The telltale sound of a bolt sliding into place confirmed he could not go back up.

"Oh, come on!" Nick yelled at nothing in particular. "You've got to be kidding me!" A faint tremble passed through the ladder, and Nick stared at where it would be, if he could see. "No way. That's too cliché. You're not going to drop—"

With a snap, the ladder folded away from him, each rung separating to let him fall through. He yelped briefly as he tumbled backward, coming down lightly on a padded surface that felt like a giant pillow. He could not have dropped more than a few pawlengths.

Nick lay where he had fallen for a short time, wondering if it was wise to get up and go anywhere, after the last few incidents upstairs. He let his heart slow back to a more reasonable panicked rate, then started taking in his surroundings as best he could.

The most obvious thing in the dark room was the pillow Nick lay on. It was larger than he was tall, and likely could have served to catch someone almost double his size. Above him, there was utter silence. Whatever had been trying to break down the door had stopped the instant he had climbed down the ladder, further reinforcing his belief that he had been set up. He did not even hear anything moving around upstairs anymore.

Reaching out to either side, Nick found the edge of the pillow and verified that the floor around it was similar to the warped old wood planks in the upstairs. He then sniffed, picking up hints of several different mammals, sawdust, and a lot of blood. That last item overrode his need to play it safe, making him wonder if Judy had been attacked or hurt.

Nick rolled off the pillow and into a low crouch, trying to pick out anything in the dark that might give him a sense of where he should—or could—go. The longer his eyes adjusted, the better he was able to make out details of the room, and he judged it to be about the same size and shape as the one above it. Using that knowledge, he had to assume that the door out would be in a roughly similar location. He took two steps in that direction, and heard a faint click.

"Here we go again," he muttered, hanging his head.

At first, nothing happened, and Nick wondered if he had not actually signaled to anyone his presence. Then, scratching noises began all around him, setting his nerves on-edge and making his fur bristle. The sound grew clearer, until he realized it was not one thing making it, but hundreds or thousands, all around him. The scraping and scratching seemed to be everywhere, and all Nick could think of were cockroaches scurrying about.

Tiptoeing forward, Nick felt something brush his fur and cringed. A second later, there were multiple faint flicks against the tips of his fur, sending him into a full panic. He hurried to the door as things brushed him from every direction, getting closer to grabbing hold each time. To his great relief, the door was right where he had expected it to be, and he felt around until he found the handle. It rattled loudly, but would not open.

With surprising suddenness, the room went silent, and Nick froze, eyes wide in the dark. Behind him, he heard the creak of a door—or trap door—opening, followed by raspy breaths as something seemed to be climbing down the ladder. A thump behind him let him know as paws hit the floor.

Slow and deep breaths near the ladder area allowed Nick to try and track the approaching threat, and he definitely did not have much time. When the next pawstep brought the hostile mammal closer, Nick hurriedly dug out his lock picks and set to work on the door. He had just begun to get a sense for the internals of the lock, when a low growl let him know he was in serious danger.

Nick worked frantically to pop the lock, as the pawsteps came his way quickly. They stopped right behind him, and he stopped moving, focused only on the surprisingly-cool breath against the back of his neck. Turning very slowly around, Nick tried to face his potential killer, but could not make out even a vague shape in the room, despite the breath now hitting him on the top of his head.

"Let's talk about this," Nick pleaded, as another breath parted his forehead fur. "Two rational, reasonable, calm adults…"

A fresh growl increased in volume, until Nick trembled against the door, his eyes squeezed shut. The growl continued and shifted into a painful screech, which Nick could not match to any possible mammal in his mind. Peeking through his fingers, all he could see was a wide-open muzzle with dozens of overly-sharp teeth—and the reason he could see that much was that the jaw was glowing and semi-transparent. The shriek shifted one more time, the tone so sharp as to make him cry out, too, as he cowered against the doorframe. When he blinked, the mouth and scream both vanished, leaving him alone in the quiet room again.

Reaching down, Nick verified that he had, in fact, slightly peed his pants.

"Ghosts aren't real," he told himself, though his jaw felt so tight that the words came out almost choked. "Go find Judy and run far, far away."

Paws shaking, Nick turned back to the door and found that he did not need to pick the lock anymore. It had unlocked sometime during the attack by…whatever had been in the room. Not one to question a tiny shred of good luck, Nick shoved the door open, dove out of the room, and slammed the door behind him.

Nick looked around frantically with his back to the door, as his heart pounded painfully. He now stood in what appeared to have once been a workshop of some sort, with dozens of tools hanging on a pegboard over a long bench, lit by flickering old bulbs. While the room was not huge, he had far more space to move around than he had elsewhere in the house, and this particular place seemed to have been maintained recently.

"Anyone here?" Nick called out. When he got no immediate reply, he grabbed a nearby wooden stool and propped it against the door handle, in case whatever he had seen in the previous room tried to get out. "Hello? ZPD here, trying to be very non-threatening."

The lightbulb's flickering drew Nick's eye back to the workbench. Drawing his pistol, he approached cautiously, watching the shadows at the edges of the room for movement. With no other doors, he had little else to do but examine the bench for something he might be able to use to get out.

Nick only got halfway to the bench, when the abrupt scent of dried blood began to make him feel ill. He looked around, searching for the source, but when he reached the bench itself, his attention fell on a ratty pile of what he thought might be fabric at first. Once he was certain there was no one else in the room, he holstered his pistol and paid more attention to the workbench—and immediately wished he had not.

The pile of fabric was fuzzy, and unmistakably some kind of fur. Dried blood covered much of the bench around it, with bloodied knives and two sets of pliers nearby. Nick gagged and covered his mouth, only barely managing to keep from vomiting. He turned away, and found that the shelves nearby held mason jars filled with fangs. Near those, several skulls were visible, which Nick was fairly certain were once rabbits.

Swallowing hard, Nick forced himself to shut out all of his emotions, like he did when dealing with a hustle. He knew if he thought too hard on what he was seeing, he would either cry or go catatonic, thinking of what might happen to Judy. Thankfully, he could not pick up her scent, so he knew she was not among the skulls, and if he hurried, would not be. In fact, he could not pick up almost any mammalian scents, beyond the blood.

Next, Nick studied the walls, hoping one of them might have a hidden door. He soon spotted a narrow ladder up to a storage balcony. Sure enough, near the top of the ladder was a simple door. This seemed almost too easy, given how everything had snowballed to that point. He almost expected a ghost bear to come bursting through that door on cue, but the room remained silent.

"When we get out of here, we're having a serious talk about how I'm not superstitious, Carrots," he said under his breath, as he went to the ladder and tested it to make sure it was sturdy. "Cautious and prudent, we'll call it. Not superstitious."

Nick felt confident the ladder was not a trap and began his ascent. Three rungs up, he put his weight down and something under his paw pads clicked within the rung, and the room's lights went out. In absolute darkness, Nick held still, listening, to decide what to do next.

Creaks of the wood boards somewhere below and to one side hinted that someone else had entered the room. Nick sniffed, but picked up nothing more than the existing scent of blood. Still, the pawsteps continued, and he realized they were moving over toward the bench. He remained perfectly motionless, hoping whoever or whatever was out there would leave without noticing him.

He then heard the telltale scrape of a knife being picked up from the table, and any sense of stealth was forgotten.

Scrambling up the rungs of the ladder, Nick was onto the balcony in seconds, while the creaking boards below gave him little idea of where the threat might be. Nick went straight to the door, though he had to fumble around in the dark for a few seconds until he found the handle. Twice, his paw slid off the smooth metal, and the loud wooden groan of the ladder under the weight of something large made him even more frantic. Finally, the handle clicked and he dove through the door before it had opened more than a few inches. He yanked the door shut behind him, and thankfully heard nothing from the other side. He searched in the dark for a lock, but there was nothing to close the door on a more permanent basis.

Panting, Nick stared at the door knob in the dim light of the new room, waiting for something to come through after him. He remained there for almost a full minute, before he heard a new sound behind him. Soft paws came down on the wood floors, and in Nick's mind, some larger predator was inches away, slinking toward him.

Nick drew his pistol without thinking as he spun, raising it as Judy came through the far doorway, holding up her own weapon. They froze, aiming at one another for a long second, before simultaneously turning their pistols away and rearming the safeties.

"Where've you been?" Judy asked, her voice shaking. "C'mon! I want to get out of here!"


	4. Chapter 4

**Furight Night, Chapter 4 – Basement**

 **October 24** **th** **, Wednesday Evening – Nocturnal District**

"It's not haunted, Nick," Judy insisted, tapping her hind paw rapidly.

"You saw it yourself, Fluff. Ghosts killed something. You said it, not me. Ghost bears. It's absolutely ghost bears. I mean, I can't prove it's ghosts…but it's got to be ghosts."

"There's no such thing as ghosts," she snapped a bit more forcefully than intended, as she stared into the dark staircase down from the front room. They had been at the top of the stairs to the basement, bickering as a way to stall. "There's a rational explanation for all of it. We need to finish searching, in case someone's hurt."

"We're going to be hurt at this rate!" he countered, motioning toward the stairs. "Besides, you're the one stalling. You have the flashlight. Mine's with my radio, being munched by something upstairs."

Judy lifted her paw to stare at the flashlight she held. He was right, she was stalling. The sound of something dying in the dining room had rattled her more than she cared to admit. Imagining herself in that situation only made it worse, and the longer she was in the house, the more her mind constructed even worse horrors.

"You're ready to cover me?" she asked him, peeking over her shoulder.

Nick scowled down at her, but checked his pistol and nodded. "Yes. We're both making it out of here. Lead the way and I'll drop anything that comes near you."

Judy took a slow breath to steady her nerves, then began down the stairs, keeping the flashlight aimed straight ahead, with her pistol alongside it. Her paws barely made a whisper on the smooth wood stairs, and Nick only slightly more noise behind her. She kept her ears moving nonstop, searching for anything in the dark ahead, but she could hear nothing, and the beam of light revealed nothing more than a dirt floor at the bottom.

"Keep an eye on the door," Judy said over her shoulder to Nick. "I don't want—"

The bang of the door slamming shut nearly made Judy jump into the air. Turning, she saw Nick had his shoulder pressed against it and was fighting with the handle.

"Don't even say it, Fluff," he told her, then grunted as he pushed on the door. "I was standing here when it closed and it shoved me aside. I could see around the edge, and there was nothing there, but it pushed as hard as Bogo."

Judy moved the flashlight over the frame of the door, but there was nothing to hint at a way to reopen it, if it was locked from the far side.

"Back that up," Nick told her, staring up at one corner of the door. "Right there."

Judy did as requested and noticed a faint gleam when she stopped it where he was looking.

Rising up on his tiptoes, Nick grabbed at the upper right side of the door's frame. A few scratches of his claws later, he pulled something free. After starting at it briefly, Nick held up what appeared to be a tiny camera for Judy to see.

"Wireless transmitter and camera," he explained, squinting as he searched the rest of the staircase. "If we do have ghosts, someone's recording them, or our reactions to them. If it's not ghosts, some seriously sick individual is messing with us."

"I'm starting to feel like that's actually good news. C'mon. Let's finish exploring this place."

Together, they set off again, and made it to the bottom of the long staircase without anything else happening. Once they were both on the dirt floor, Judy advanced into the dark room beyond, most of which was outside the range of her flashlight—which she realized was beginning to dim. Rather than bring attention to it and bring about Nick's worried rants, she continued on, hoping it would last a little longer.

Toes coming down with a faint crunch each step, she drifted slightly right of center, while Nick went left, though he could not go far from her light. The wall came into sight after a few more strides, and Judy followed it forward.

"Got a question, Carrots," Nick said, his voice barely above a whisper.

"Not really the time, unless it has something to do with this place."

Nick grumbled softly. "It doesn't, but you know talking helps me steady my nerves."

"Ask it if you have to, but I want to get this done," she told him, without taking her attention off the long cement wall that stretched into the darkness ahead.

"I don't think I've really had a chance to watch you move around this cautiously since we started dating—"

"Nick," she began, clenching her jaw briefly. "So help me, if this has anything to do with you staring at my tail, I will turn this house around and put you in a corner."

"It…well, sort of. How do you move so quietly? I've spent my whole life trying to avoid being seen or heard, but I can barely hear you. I feel like a clumsy oaf by comparison."

Judy rolled her eyes and stopped walking. "I'm not all that good at it anymore. I can hear myself all too easily. When I was younger, I took five years of gymnastics. Nothing special. Most of my siblings took gymnastics as kits."

No sooner had the words left her mouth, than Judy saw where the line of conversation was going.

"Gymnastics, you say?" Nick asked, perking up. Any hint of being afraid vanished in the face of whatever he was thinking. "Still fairly flexible? Curious for purely professional reasons…"

"Stop it, Nick," Judy told him, glaring over at him. "Dead mammals all through the house. Can you please not try to distract me _now_? Be happy to talk about it if and when we're done here. Not now!"

"Love it when you take charge, Fluff," Nick teased, and she could see his grin from the corner of her eyes as she went back to searching the room. "Can we play the game where you're the police chief and I'm a bad street fox again?"

"I will never understand why you get flirtatious when you're terrified, Slick. There has to be a clinical definition for this. If we get ourselves and everyone else out of this safely, then yes. We'll play any game you want."

"You know I don't forget, Fluff."

"Then pay attention to what you're doing and maybe we'll get the chance." Judy stopped talking and brought her wavering beam of light back toward the wall as she advanced, and found she was standing only a few steps from a huddled shape on the ground. At a glance, it appeared to be a wolf-sized mammal under a dark brown canvas sheet. It did not move as she neared it. "Nick, what was the description of the victim?"

"Mammal in a brown or black canvas sack or clothing. Why?"

"I've got something over here," she called over her shoulder, without letting the covered body out of her sight. She stepped a little closer. "If you can hear me, I'm with the ZPD. We're here to help. I'm coming over now."

The mass under the cloth did not budge, and Judy worried she might be too late. There was no scent of blood or death, but her sense of smell was far from perfect, especially in musty places like the basement. When she reached the edge of the cloth, she verified she could hear Nick only a stone's throw away, and decided he was close enough to check the body. Judy reached down and grabbed the edge of the canvas, paused a moment, then tugged it aside.

As prepared as Judy had been for a wounded mammal lashing out, or even the suspect lying in wait for another victim, she was not even remotely ready for what did reveal itself.

Judy had perhaps a full second, during which her flashlight showed deep bloody wounds and tattered fur. She thought she glimpsed bone in the light, but before she could really gauge what she was seeing, the mammal—whatever it was—leapt up and lunged at her. She scrambled backward, dropping her flashlight as she fired three tranquillizer darts toward where she had seen movement. Panting nearby seemed to move around, but in the moving light of her flashlight on the floor, she could not see the mammal anywhere. Likewise, her darts were missing, hinting that she might have hit her target before it escaped.

"You okay, Judy?" Nick gasped, diving to her side. She could only stare at where the mammal had been, as he frantically checked over her uniform. "There's not a mark on you. Did you hit your head? I saw you go down, but didn't see what got you."

Judy touched her head and found that she had a bit of swelling on the back of her head between her ears, but it was not too painful. Her heart's racing was a little concerning. Aside from those, she felt intact.

"I'm fine," she assured him, clasping his paw in hers. "This place is absolutely haunted, Nick. Something…something dead just tried to get me. The wounds on it… Nothing lived through them. My darts are just gone."

"So is it," he reminded her, squeezing her paw reassuringly, with his other arm behind her neck to help her up. "You're fine. Nothing's getting my bun. That's a promise."

Judy opened her mouth to say something, but before she could, a pair of gleaming eyes appeared in the dark ahead of her. A second pair lit up near that one. Then, one by one, dozens of pairs opened all across the edge of the light at varying heights. The way Nick froze against her let her know there were more behind her.

"How many?" she asked softly, sliding her left paw down to her belt to grab another magazine for her tranquillizer pistol. With only one shot left in the current magazine, she had to be ready. With her regular pistol back in the car, she was going to need to make all of her shots count.

"I've got nine on this side." Nick swallowed hard, staring past her. "What can you hear?"

Judy raised her ears and slowly pivoted them. "Breathing, but that's all. No movement."

"They're not advancing?"

"No, _no_ movement at all," she explained, straining to pick up anything. "I can't hear their paws on the dirt floor, or their fur brushing together, or anything. It's like they aren't even there."

A shrill howl echoed through the basement, and Judy flattened out her ears and pressed her face to Nick's uniform shirt, trying to shut out the noise. Though it sent the same panicked need to run that wolves' howls did, this was something different. It was like a half dozen different species' howls were mixed together into one sound. When the cry ended, Judy peeked back around Nick's shoulder, and all of the eyes were gone, leaving the basement feeling far more empty than it had begun.

"You okay, Fluff?" Nick asked softly, as his attention darted around.

"Yeah," she told him, rolling over onto her knees, so she did not need him to sit up. She picked up her flashlight and the bulb flickered dangerously. "Loud noises. You know how it is. I don't hear anything out there, now."

Nick nodded, but kept looking around. "I never saw any movement in the dark."

"That's kind of how darkness works," she teased, then turned her attention to the fallen canvas sheet. For some reason, it was up against the wall.

"I may not have perfect night vision, but I can see pretty clearly, even down here," he explained, finally relaxing slightly. At times, it surprised her how determined he was to protect her, no matter the cost to himself. Given how often she had to protect him, it sometimes felt silly for him to act that way. "If something moved, I'd have seen it. Nothing did. The eyes seemed to be the only thing out there."

Judy turned and stared at Nick for a moment. "You're saying there weren't any mammals?"

"Exactly what I'm saying. Look at the canvas. It's stuck in the wall. Either we're dealing with ghosts passing through walls, or…well, I haven't figured out the 'or' yet."

Standing, Judy walked to the wall and shone her flashlight on the canvas sheet. It hung oddly, the end pinched between two cement blocks of the wall. She tugged at it, but it would not budge. When she gave it a second pull, the back end of one tranquillizer dart appeared between the blocks.

"You're not wrong," she told Nick, tapping the dart with her finger claw. "I shot at whatever attacked me and it looks like it went through the wall. The dart didn't."

"Judy, you need to see this."

Glancing over her shoulder, Judy saw that Nick had his tranquillizer pistol aimed at the end of the room across from where they had entered the basement. There, a dim red glow illuminated a hallway, at the end of which was a staircase up. Someone or something wanted them to know where to go next, and that did not bode well for either of them. Almost immediately after the dim red light appeared, Judy's flashlight flickered one last time and went out.

"We can't go back," Judy reminded Nick, though she knew she was telling herself that as much as him. "Be ready, but we have to go through it. If I'm measuring right, that should put us out past the kitchen. Those steps should exit into the back yard."

"Or a wood chipper," Nick offered, with a shrug. "Sorry. I can't filter what I say when I'm scared. Same reason I get flirty. Just tell me to shut up if I say something stupid."

"That'd be rude to always be telling you that," Judy told him, grinning despite the painful clench to her stomach. "C'mon. We need to get moving. By now, Clawhauser has probably called us fifty times or so. I'd rather get out of here on our own than have Bogo show up with the whole ZPD to save us."

This time Nick led the way toward the ominous red light—a sure sign he thought they were in real danger. He rarely would take the lead, unless he believed something might attack her. She did not have the heart to remind him she was a lot less likely to actually get hit by anything, with how much faster she was, but the sentiment was sweet. One of these days, she needed to straighten out all of his insecurities, especially when they related to her. More than a year together, and he still sometimes surprised her at odd times.

"Stay back a few steps," Nick said softly, without turning, as he approached the lit hall. "This feels like a trap. I don't want us both getting caught by something. You should have time to react when I get attacked."

"If," Judy said firmly.

"Right, that's what I meant," he replied, sounding unconvinced.

Together, they reached the narrower red-lit hall, and Judy fell back. Nick continued, his steps more cautious, as he checked the walls, and then focused on the steep staircase at the end. Once he reached it, Judy came down the hall behind him.

"Maybe I was wrong," Nick said, lowering his pistol. He glanced up the stairs and shrugged. "I'm glad I am."

Judy got halfway down the hall before Nick touched the bottom step of the stairs with his hind paw. When he did, the resounding click made them both wince. Almost instantly, walls slid in both behind and in front of Judy, cutting her off from Nick and the room they had come from. Worse still, they cut her off from any source of light.

"Nick?" Judy asked, straining her upright ears for anything. "Can you hear me, Nick?"

When he did not respond—or she could not hear him—Judy holstered her pistol and reached out with both paws, trying to find the walls. She knew in her heart there would be no door, but her mind's attempts at optimism struggled to assure her there would be an easy way out.

"I'm coming, Nick. Stay safe until I can reach you. If you die without me being there for you, so help me, I'll find a way to make you miserable in your afterlife," she said aloud, knowing it was mostly for her own reassurance.

Two steps forward, and Judy's forepaws connected with the wall. Unlike the cement ones to either side, the divider that had cut her off from Nick was some kind of composite wood. Knocking on it gave little more than a dull thump, hinting at soundproofing. As she felt around for a lever or latch, Judy realized something was moving behind her. She froze, turning both ears backward to follow the shuffling approach. When she did, she heard a faint whispering, though it made no sense. Whatever was behind her stopped within inches of her back, and she could feel something near her, though she could not make herself move.

 _Stay still_ , she told herself, squeezing her eyes shut. She even held her breath. _It couldn't have smelled you, or it would have already attacked. Wait it out. However it got in here, it can get right back out._

Puffs of cold breath on the back of Judy's neck startled her, making her eyes pop open, staring at the dark wall in front of her. She managed to keep quiet through several more breaths, until what felt like damp fingers started brushing at her uniform coat. The first tug at her jacket left her squirming, jaw clenched to stay silent, but after several more touches, ranging from her ankles to her neck—accompanied by the smell of something rotting—she could not help herself. She screamed and collapsed, sliding herself as far into the corner as she could.

Judy panted and looked around in the darkness, unable to see anything, but she could not stop hunting for the source of the assault. She felt violated, terrified, and ready to lay down and die crying. Whatever was going on was more than she could handle. There was nothing she could fight or arrest. This was too much.

Pulling her knees up to her nose, Judy huddled in as small a ball as she could manage. Thankfully, nothing else touched her, and soon the faint movement she could hear retreated, along with the rank odor. Soon, the tiny room felt empty again, but she could not make herself get up. All she could do was stare straight ahead, shivering with her arms around her shins.

"Judy?" Nick asked, dropping alongside her. "Judy, are you hurt? Talk to me!"

Judy blinked and looked up, not having even realized that the walls had slid away, and Nick was beside her. The dim red glow did not provide much light, but she could see that the entire hall was open again, though the wall between them and the previous room remained closed.

"I… Nick, there was something out there," she mumbled, as the worry and heartbreak in his eyes told her how scared he was for her. "It touched me. I…I thought I was going to die."

Wrapping his arms around her, Nick kissed the top of her head and held her until she began to relax. "You're safe now, Judy. Whatever it was, it came for me, too. It's scary, but doesn't seem to actually want to hurt us. The way's open. We need to get going. I'll carry you, if you need me to."

Judy shook her head against Nick's shoulder and sniffled. Despite trying to force herself to be strong, she realized she had left his jacket soaked from her tears. This was one of the greatest reasons she loved that dumb fox. When he was weak, she could be strong for him, and when she was weak, he took the lead. They complimented each other perfectly.

"I'm good now," Judy whispered, putting one forepaw on his shoulder to pull herself up. With her free arm, she wiped the last of the tears off her muzzle. "Let's go."

Nick helped Judy to her hind paws, and they made their way quickly to the stairs and up, with Judy leading the way. This time, they were able to make their way to the top, where Judy shoved open a simple wooden hatch, flooding the basement with damp chill air from outside. A light misting rain came down on her face immediately, reassuring her that they had reached the back yard, even before she popped her head out to look. It took her only a second to confirm dead trees and barren yard around her, and she hopped over the lip of the cellar doors onto the wet ground. Reaching back, she took Nick's paw and helped him out, too.

"Um…Fluff?" Nick said, his voice nearly cracking. "You look around yet?"

Judy knew she really did not want to do it, but being prepared for whatever happened next required her to look anyway. Taking a deep breath, she checked over her left shoulder and saw that the yard extended no more than fifty bounding strides in that direction, before a new-looking towering fence loomed overhead beyond the limits of her ability to jump. She turned the other way, and saw that the other direction was no better. Stones along the base of the fence all but prevented tunneling out. They were trapped, yet again.

"That's not all," he told her, pointing directly behind her. "We aren't even close to done with this. Might get to see that ghost bear eat my face yet."

Wincing, Judy stared at Nick's face a few extra seconds, hoping for it all to be a joke in bad humor. When his expression did not change, she pivoted on the balls of her hind paws, and found that the two fences funneled them toward a massive old barn. Inside the rotted wood structure, light flickered endlessly, as though there were a bright fire, or something similar.

"Let's get going," Judy said, as much to herself as to Nick. Unloading her tranquillizer pistol, she switched to her spare magazine, so she had all four shots ready. Squaring her shoulders, she marched toward the barn and whatever lay inside.


	5. Chapter 5

**Furight Night, Chapter 5 – Back Yard**

 **October 24** **th** **, Wednesday Evening – Nocturnal District**

Nick kept his tranquillizer pistol aimed straight toward the door of the barn, several inches above Judy's ears, as they made their way slowly across the yard. The occasional flashes of lightning and rumbles of thunder still made his stomach clench, but he no longer felt like they were a real threat. Whatever was going to kill them lay either in the house behind them, or the barn ahead.

 _Straight line to the back of the barn_ , he told himself, analyzing the possible layout of the barn from what he could see of the outside. _Should be a mostly open bottom floor. Fence doesn't appear to extend past the entrance, so we go out the back doors. No matter what happens, Judy gets out, even if you have to throw her out those doors. Bunny might be the first target for rabid predator ghosts, but a fox standing up to anyone pisses them off, living or dead. Get her to safety, and they'll come for you. It's not ideal, but it's all you've got, stupid._

They continued across the long yard, their paws splashing faintly in the mud and wet grass, while mist continued to fall on them, soaking through fur and clothing. Normally, that would have bothered Nick greatly, but given what they had seen, he did not care much at all about the rain. All of his attention was riveted on the barn door, which Judy marched steadily toward.

Something in the muddy ground ahead snapped Nick's attention just ahead of Judy's hind paws. He could not put words to what was wrong, but his instincts screamed at him to avoid one particular patch of grass.

"Judy!" Nick hissed, as her paw came down on the ground. A sucking click from the mud warned him he was too late by the time she turned halfway to blink nervously at him.

Throwing aside his pistol, Nick dove forward, taking Judy right off her paws. They tumbled and came down with him atop her, panting as he glanced furtively around the yard for a threat. The panicked whimper she let out let him know that for once, he was not going to get chided for being overprotective. Instead, she put her paws on the front of his jacket, waiting for him to explain.

"I'm sorry," he whispered, when the yard remained silent. "I thought I heard…"

A faint chuckle echoed around the yard, as though carried by more than one throat. Judy immediately dug her finger claws into his jacket so tightly that he thought she might rip his fur out.

"Ghosts?" she asked, voice trembling. "I don't see anything."

Nick shrugged and remained still and low to the ground, atop Judy. "You stepped on something. I don't know what it was."

Judy slid one hind paw out from under him, and turned it so she could see the underside. "I didn't feel anything, and there's nothing but mud on me. What was it?"

"I don't know," he admitted, and the laughter around them came again. This time, he saw faint shadows moving along the fence, though the shapes were indistinct. "I'm not convinced this is a ghost anymore."

Judy frantically slapped his chest with both forepaws rapidly. "Nick! It's ghosts! I saw them! I heard them…and still do!"

Reaching past Judy's shoulder, Nick fumbled around on the muddy ground until he found her pistol. He raised it and aimed toward a section of the fence where wolves on all fours appeared to be forming from the faint shadowy shapes. He aimed low by intent, so the dart would skip on the wet ground near the rocks at the base of the fence. The pistol clicked loudly as he fired, and the dart went where he wanted—something he could thank Judy for, after months of badgering him to spend more time at the shooting range—spraying mud across the rocks and fence. As he had hoped, the "wolves" in that area vanished completely. He only had time to grin before Judy flipped over beneath him, glaring at the fence.

"Lights and shadows?" she demanded, shoving him aside so she could hop up. Marching angrily to the edge of the rocks, she then poked around with one toe a moment, before reaching down and yanking a tiny filtered light from the ground. "They're using LEDs to project images? What's going on, Nick? Who's doing this…and why?"

Nick got up, and handed Judy back her pistol as she came over. Turning, he squinted at the open door of the barn through the mist, which was rapidly changing to cold rain. "Only one way to find out."

Going back, Nick got his own pistol and wiped mud off of it as they neared the barn. By the time the light coming from the opening began to show on their wet jackets, he was reasonably certain his weapon would fire, if needed. Whether it would fire a second time remained to be seen. The tranquillizer pistols were fairly weather-resistant, but not immune to things like mud and dirt jamming them.

Side-by-side, Nick and Judy advanced up to the edge of the door. There, Judy used her left paw to signal to Nick to follow her inside, where she would swing left, and he could head right. At least, that was what he thought she signaled. Alternatively, she was giving the paw-signs that they were going out for ice cream. Sooner or later, he was going to have to learn the ZPD signals better, or convince Judy to learn his own signal system despite her claims that it was "childish and nonsensical."

Judy led the way through the door, and then took a hard left—confirming Nick had gotten the signals right this time—and he went right. The moment he cleared the door, he saw that much of the barn was open, with two slightly smaller than fox-sized mammals standing near one of the wooden support beams, huddled over something that one was holding with tongs, while the other welded it. Neither looked up as Nick and Judy entered the room, their welding masks low over their faces, and their bulky coats blocking helping block their view to either side.

Nick got his back to the wall, then looked to Judy for direction, given not only that she was technically his superior, but also because she had a better handle on ZPD policy and legal intricacies that did not involve escaping punishment. She raised her pistol and gave him a curt nod, then advanced on the two mammals, and Nick followed her lead.

"ZPD, I want to see all paws in the air, _now_!" Judy bellowed, leveling her pistol at the mammal nearer her. "Drop the tools and put your paws up!"

Both mammals stood up sharply, looking around in clear confusion between Nick and Judy. The one nearer Nick tossed aside her welding mask, dropped a metal framework and tongs, and raised her arms immediately, allowing Nick to see that she was not actually wearing a coat. Instead, her leathery wings fell back behind her, revealing her foxlike face and a large golden ruffle of fur around her neck. Knowing what he was looking at, Nick realized the other mammal was a "flying fox" bat, too. That particular species name had always annoyed Nick, as he did not see the similarities, but someone in times long past apparently had.

The male bat was a little slower than the female to react, but he seemed to realize he was surrounded and shifted his wings back so his arms and hands were visible. He slowly turned off the welding torch he held, and lowered it to the floor, before standing in a mirrored stance to the female bat, with his arms high and wings spread so it was clear that he had nothing hidden.

"Hello, officers," the female bat said nervously, her large black eyes darting between them. "How can we help you? I'd like to point out that we are entirely unarmed and harmless."

Nick advanced, while Judy hung back, both of them keeping their weapons steady on the bats. Once he was closer, he said, "Let's start with identification, and move on from there. You'll need to forgive us if we're a little jumpy at the moment."

"Certainly," the male bat told Nick, and made a very slow and obvious movement toward his pants' pocket. "Grabbing my ID. Ginnie, you should do the same."

Both bats carefully took out their wallets and handed their Zootopia IDs to Nick. He checked both, and they appeared to be real.

"Ginnefur Goodwind and Jason Batman," Nick read aloud, so Judy got the names, too. He passed the cards back, but did not even consider lowering his weapon. "Hold tight while my partner calls this in."

"Are we in some kind of trouble?" Ginnefur asked, while Jason tried unsuccessfully to get Judy's attention.

"That's a strong possibility," Nick told her. "All depends on some very detailed explanations we're going to want in a minute."

Across the barn, Judy glared at her radio and kept pressing the button on it, to no avail. Even from where he stood, Nick could hear the faint static as it failed to connect.

"I…um…I can help with that," Jason said at last, keeping his arms up, but pointing vaguely toward Judy. "I might know why your radio isn't working. That… There's a chance it's my fault. A really good chance. Almost guaranteed."

Judy kept her head down, but looked up at Nick. She appeared to be on the verge of getting very angry. To give her time to cool off, Nick cleared his throat and drew the attention of both bats back to himself.

"Explain why our radios aren't working," Nick demanded, and Jason ducked his head a little. "Or, why hers isn't. Mine's lost somewhere in that house."

Jason blinked a few times, then nodded. "I've got a signal jammer here in the barn. Keeps animals from using their phones while they're here. Plus, it's safer. You never know what all those waves will do to your head. Might give you headaches, might give you cancer. Did you know that a researcher believes cell phone radiation could actually result in monkeys learning to talk? Big pharma lies about their effects on the average mammal, so I like to play it safe and block them all."

Judy's skeptical stare left no doubt in Nick's mind about what she thought of the bat's theories. Opting instead to play along, Nick answered, "Oh, right. The waves. Absolutely. We like to keep it short with the radios, too. No more than we need to. I don't see the jammer, so could you maybe turn it off for a minute? We'll see about getting it right back on afterward."

"Of course!" Jason replied, scrambling to his feet, seemingly unaware of how close Judy came to shooting him in the back with a tranquillizer dart. He scurried across the barn to a shadowed section of wall near the front doors, where Nick nearly overlooked a black-painted box. Grabbing a large lever on the side, Jason yanked it down, though there was no other sign of change. "All set. I can already hear those damned things buzzing. The other radio you said you lost, it's probably in the lost-and-found chute."

Judy raised her radio to her ear and when she pressed the button, Nick heard the line chirp as it connected properly. "Captain Hopps to dispatch. Do you read?"

"Loud and clear!" Clawhauser's voice boomed, despite how low Nick knew Judy always kept her volume. "Where've you been? I've got three cruisers on their way to your location! Is everyone okay?"

"We're both fine, but keep those cruisers coming, and add an ambulance," Judy told him, and both bats turned to look at her with more than a little surprise.

"Ambulance?" asked Ginnefur, sounding as though she were on the verge of panic, her ears darting about, showing her nervousness more than her face. "Who's hurt? You aren't going to…shoot us?"

"Not if you follow orders and answer questions," Judy replied, motioning Jason over to Ginnefur. Once they were together, she read them their rights, before adding, "Now, do either of you want to explain what in the world is going on here? Is there a victim to go with all the blood I saw in the house? If you withhold information and it causes someone's death that we could have prevented…"

"Death? Wha—Oh! No, no, no!" Jason blurted out, grinning briefly, before calming back down as he stared at Nick's pistol. "There's no one dead or dying. I can explain it all. You went through the house?"

"We did," Nick said dryly.

"Oh, good. What'd you think?"

Nick stared at Jason a moment longer, then sighed. "This is all some kind of stupid prank, isn't it?"

"Prank? No, absolutely not!" Jason proclaimed, while Ginnefur glared at him.

Shaking her head, Ginnefur spoke up quickly. "Yes, it's absolutely a prank, if that's what you want to call it. Jason has a hard time explaining things well, especially when he's having a small freak out. Jason, can we not imply we're killing anyone to the very concerned police officers?"

"I… Yes, that's accurate," admitted Jason with a huff. "Maybe I should let Ginnie talk."

"Okay, so it's like a prank," Ginnefur explained more slowly, once she appeared convinced Jason would not get them both in trouble. "You came through the house. Did you…um…see the kitchen?"

"I did, yes. Got a little too close to that for comfort," Judy replied somewhat forcefully. "Sorry about the mess in the corner. I wasn't ready for what I saw on the counter."

"Oh, well, that explains the guns," the bat answered, shoulders sinking. "Do either of you know anything about bat holidays?"

Judy and Nick both shook their heads.

Jason muttered something under his breath that Nick missed, and Ginnefur kicked him before continuing. "Most of the city doesn't seem to, so that's no surprise, really. Jason and I just moved here last year, and we wanted to see about bringing one of our more important celebrations to town. Once a year, bats go out of their way to scare each other and their community. It's meant to make everyone cherish the life they have, but it's kind of evolved into trying to make your friends cry. We thought it'd be fun to have a good bat-style haunted house. We're opening up to visitors the start of the week, and advertising is already being printed. We've even got a business license, though I'll admit, it's pretty vague, as the city doesn't really know what a fright house is. Nothing you saw in that house was real. I swear it. Using real corpses would be cheating. With the mix of species in Zootopia, we were going for a prey-themed scare this year. We needed an extra year to figure out what might get to the average predator."

Judy peeked up at Nick, and he could practically hear her silently arguing that there was no way everything she saw was fake. Opting to back her up, as always, he told the bats, "I'm not sure I'm ready to believe that. You mind walking us through it? I can guess at how you did some of it, but I'm not assuming anything on this one."

At that, Jason's big ears perked. "Where would you like to start?"

"Right at the beginning. Front room," Judy told them. "Walk and talk. Keep your hands on your heads. I want to meet the other officers out front. You make any sudden movements and we put you on the ground. Try to run and you won't make it three steps."

"Oh, the front room," Jason said, excitedly clapping. When he seemed to realize there were still two pistols aimed at him, he quickly raised his arms again. With Ginnefur at his side, he began walking out of the back side of the barn, Nick and Judy only a few paces behind. "Entrance has a laser tripwire. Once everyone who stepped onto the porch comes inside, a timer starts, then the door closes and locks. We let the guests explore from there, but it sets a good tone."

"You built the house into a trap for your…guests?" Nick asked, as they crossed from the relatively dry barn into the rain outside. Despite the rainfall, it was relieving to see that there were no more fences or walls trapping them.

"Yeah! Ginnie here is an engineer. Most of the mechanical gimmicks are hers. The folding stairs, the sliding walls, the tripwires, and even the lights are her work."

Judy still seemed ready to shoot both mammals, and she spoke up before Jason sounded as though he were done expounding on Ginnefur's efforts. "Explain the kitchen. I could smell the blood and decay. Hate to say it, but I've smelled that before, so I know what I found."

Ginnefur turned around and walked backward as she motioned with both hands for Judy to relax. "Please listen. There's nothing real in there. That was all bugburger meat…"

"It absolutely was not!" snapped Judy.

"It is!" insisted the bat. "Jason works for a blood clinic. The donations can only stay available so long, before they need to be discarded. We sort of…borrowed…some expiring blood samples. Anyone with a good sense of smell is notoriously hard to trick, so we wanted it to be believable. Looking real isn't enough. We mixed a few drops of real rhino blood in with the bugburger and let it sit out for a day under a heat lamp, along with a bunch of fake blood. There is no mammal meat in that kitchen. It's all bugburger and syrups."

"What about the workshop?" asked Nick. "The bones. The fur. That looked disturbingly real."

"All of the bones are from my day job," Jason said. "They're fake. Every single one is fake. They're plaster and plastic copies of the real thing. No one looks very closely, once they're scared. If we put them in the first room, you'd have seen right through it all. The fur is synthetic, with a few drops of our smuggled rhino blood on it, and some red dye and syrup on the skin side."

"The voices, screams, and shadows?" Judy prodded.

They came around the end of the side fence and Nick could see the driveway in the distance.

Ginnefur shook her head. "Hidden speakers and lighting arrays. Some of those required me to design entirely new electronics to make work. For the howls and screams, we mixed a bunch of different species' tones to make it impossible to identify. How'd you like the little puffs of air to make you think there's bugs on you, or someone breathing down your neck?"

"Terrifying," Nick grumbled, only to have both bats grin happily. They patted each other on the arms, then quickly raised their hands again.

Judy was far from done. "The body in the basement? I saw its wounds. It disappeared into a wall!"

"Sliding walls," Ginnefur announced gleefully. "The rubber and gelatin body is on a pulley, and after it jumps up, it gets pulled into the wall. Almost no one sees it go in the dark, so they think it vanished. Clever, huh?"

Somewhere in the distance, Nick heard police sirens. Their backup was almost to the driveway. Blue and red lights were barely visible through the trees.

"Okay, one last thing," Judy went on, finally lowering her pistol slightly. If Nick was reading her right, she was beginning to accept the story. "The fingers and paws grabbing at me in the red-lit escape from the basement. I felt at least a dozen fingers all over my arms, legs, and back, and they all felt…moist. How'd you do that? Is there someone else in there doing that part?"

Jason stopped walking, turned, and then approached Judy, who gave him a cautious stare. He lowered himself so he was looking her in the eyes, before saying softly, "Grabbing fingers? There's nothing like that in the house. Nothing at all in the basement after the body sliding into the wall. We did buy the place from someone who said his father died in there…"

Pausing near a large tree, Ginnefur gave Jason a disgusted glare, then turned around, knelt, and put her hands behind the small of her back. She twisted enough to give Nick a pleading stare, as though begging him to arrest her. "You brought this on us, Jason. Don't even think about blaming me."

Nick walked over to Ginnefur and put one paw on her shoulder to let her know he was there, while he kept his pistol ready in the other.

Through the time it took Nick to get to Ginnefur, Judy and Jason stared at each other. Finally, Jason broke out laughing and shook his head, wiping away tears.

"You should have seen your face!" the bat told Judy, as her ears quickly went up in alarm. "No, there's no ghosts! Hahah! Mechanical arms, with gel fingertips! Aw, that was great. I'm using a picture from the cameras of you for our advertising. Absolute horror. It's amazing!" Nick watched as Judy's posture straightened, and her expression shifted very rapidly from alarm to anger. Then, Jason went much too far and slapped her on the shoulder so hard she nearly fell. "The public will _love_ that look of terror on the face of a cute little—"

Nick did not wait for permission. Turning his tranquillizer pistol from Ginnefur to Jason, he fired one shot and hit the bat in the shoulder. Jason wavered a moment, then fell like a lead weight, going face down in the mud with a splash.

"Nick, I had it under control!" Judy snapped, dropping to one knee. She grunted as she lifted Jason's face out of the water, so he did not drown. After she had checked to make sure he was okay, her expression softened considerably. She rolled the larger bat over onto his side. "Thank you, Slick. I hesitated, when I shouldn't have. I kind of wanted to shoot him myself."

Nick smiled and looked back at Ginnefur, who was shaking her head sadly. "He'll be fine. Just a tranq dart."

"Oh, I know," Ginnefur assured him, without getting out of the surrender position she had assumed. "I just can't believe he's that dumb. You don't slap a cop that thought you murdered a bunch of mammals. Basic common sense. I'm assuming we're under arrest, officer?"

Splashing pawsteps nearby drew Nick's attention to the road, where officers Cannus and Spetz were running their way. A half dozen other officers had already swarmed the house's porch and were headed inside.

"If everything checks out, probably not," he assured Ginnefur. "You are definitely looking at a misdemeanor, though. Jamming police broadcasts is a fairly big deal, as is slapping a police captain. Are our officers safe in the house?"

"They are. We'd need to manually reset everything after you went through."

Cannus reached them then, going past Nick and over to Judy and Jason. He slapped cuffs on the bat and picked him up, while Officer Spetz cuffed Ginnefur. Within moments, they were being led—or carried—back toward the waiting police cruisers and ambulance. The abrupt absence of anyone else left Nick and Judy surrounded by the soft sounds of the woods, broken only by the occasional chirp of a radio closer to the house and the flashing lights of the cars.

"Can we go home now?" Nick asked, while Judy padded up alongside him, wiping mud off her pants. "That was supposed to be our last call of the day, and we've been here a lot longer than I intended."

Judy nodded and checked both directions for anyone else, then reached up and took his paw in hers. They headed toward the cars slowly. "Yeah…after paperwork. We did just shoot someone."

"Non-lethal has to have less paperwork, right?"

"There is nothing we do that doesn't have a pile of paperwork, Nick. Explaining how we found a house full of corpses and aren't arresting those two is going to have its own hellish mound of reports to file. Mostly, it's going to be justifying that dart missing from your service weapon."

Nick continued a few more steps, then brought them both to a stop. "What are you planning to do while I fill out that paperwork? Sounds like you're ditching me."

"I'm going home," she told him with a huge grin. "So sorry, Slick. Guess you'll have to take the bus back to the house. I'll try to stay awake until you get back."

"Hey, that's… Actually, no you aren't," he corrected, smiling, too, as Judy's smile faded slightly. "I fired one shot. You fired four—or your pistol did. One of those was me. Somebunny is going to be doing just as much work. We're stuck at the precinct for another hour or two."

"Two? Unless you're planning to start another spitball fight or fill out the paperwork with smoke signals, there's no way it'll take that long."

"Nah, but I am distracting. You'll be lucky to finish your work before midnight with me around."

Judy scowled at him. "You really aren't, unless you're causing trouble."

"Define trouble."

Releasing his paw and stopping, Judy crossed her arms over her chest. "Nick, what are you planning?"

"Oh, nothing," he told her, reaching up and catching one of her ears with his fingers. Rubbing gently, he watched her practically melt. After a second, she swatted his paw away and glowered. "See? Distracting."

"Keep your paws to yourself at work," she warned, pointing a finger at his face. "Bogo will have both our badges if we get caught."

"Caught again, you mean."

"Whatever!" she said, shrugging. "You want to cause mischief? Plan for when we get home, not before."

"Already got that planned out. I was thinking about a late dinner, with a bit of wine, and maybe a movie. We don't have to work tomorrow, so it doesn't really matter when we get back home. Besides, you promised me some roleplaying with you as chief and me as the lowly beat cop."

Judy's mock anger faded, and she took his paw again, leading them onward. "That does sound nice—or it did until you made it weird. I swear I spoil you. Are we watching one of your terrible car chase movies?"

"Nah," he said, trying to hide his smirk. "You ever seen Scream or The Shining?"

"No. What're they about?"

"Documentaries, I think," he lied, pleased that she had not picked up on his deception. "It's a date, then?"

"Sure!" she agreed with a cheesy big-toothed smile. "If they're as dumb as your usual movies, better be plenty of drinks available."

"Have no fear. I'll be sure to get a few drinks in you before we watch either of those. Just to be safe, of course."

If Judy caught on to his trickery, she did not show it. Instead, she leaned the side of her very wet head on his arm, until they came within sight of the front porch, where Bogo was waiting for the return of the officers who had gone inside. Once he could have seen them, Judy stepped away from Nick and released his paw.

"What do you think? Should we check out this place once it opens for real?" Nick asked, eyeing the dark windows of the house. "Knowing it's fake might make it kind of fun."

"You aren't getting me back in that place without a pile of kindling, a can of gasoline, and a lighter, Nick."

"So…next year?"

"Maybe. Ask me again when I stop having nightmares."

"Next year it is," he teased, smiling as they walked down the long road toward their cruiser.


End file.
